Columbus Day: Expeditionary Force, Book 1

Craig Alanson tells a great story coupled with brutally honest insights and humor about or species. Loved it and highly recommend the read.

I was browsing Amazon for military sci-fi, and was reading samples of a bunch. The first page or so of this I was thinking this was going to be really cliche and entertainingly bad. By the end of the sample I was grabbed enough that I figured at $0.99 why the hell not. About half way through I had an epiphany in which I realized I was actually reading a very well put together sci-fi novel, and I ended up staying up until five in the morning reading.The biggest strength is the humor, it's a first person narration where the main character has great commentary that really grabs you. The depiction of military life is also one of the best I've seen, with far less of the values based bulls*** that so many other authors put out. Instead it presents it the way that the military is, which is a bunch of guys trying to make the best of a s***ty situation. There's a lot of humor (ex. the acronym BOHICA) that just doesn't get portrayed enough, so I'm glad the author gave it a lot of attention.Additionally it has enough military and tech details to make it a proper sci-fi, but not so much that you get bogged down. It's all through the lens of a guy that knows he doesn't understand any of it, so it's all pretty down to earth explanations. You understand what the technology does without all the technobabble you'd get on Star Trek. There's a lot of military slang and terminology, but most of it is quickly explained well enough that you don't have to be a veteran to have a pretty good idea what's being said. It feels like you're listening to a soldier tell a story, but from a guy that understands you don't know everything he does. It's a good balance.As far as characters go the main character, Joe Bishop, was very relatable and comes off as the kind of guy you'd want to grab a beer with. He's far from the smartest protagonist, but he's creative and has good people skills which makes him fun to read. Unfortunately a lot of the other characters aren't as well fleshed out. I think a lot of it is because Bishop moves around a lot meeting new people, so a lot of people show up and then leave the story. Almost no one from the first half of the book is present during the second half. There's also a couple of characters that get thrown in as butt monkeys that come off a bit too one dimensional, but they don't stick around for long. That said, I'm not going to spoil the surprise but there's a character named Skippy who is incredibly fun and awesome. He's got humor to match Bishop, but is also very well rounded.The story isn't especially original, but the most part it's not cliche either. There's a few cliches here and there, but not enough to be too distracting. The plot is a bit predictable, but it does pretty much tell you how it's going to turn out from the get go. So it's not like it pretends to be mysterious or promise a lot of plot twists. It's pretty straight forward, but it at least avoids a lot of cliches that way. I guess you could say the story use's tropes, but doesn't abuse them. Overall, even though the destination is pretty well known the journey there is very enjoyable.As far as how well put together it is, I'd say very well. Not quite up to the standards you'd expect from a publisher with a professional editor, but not far off. There's a few typos here and there, but far less than you typically see in a self published book.Overall it's a pretty great novel, and an absolute steal at $0.99, this is worth far more than it's currently priced at. It could use a bit more polishing, but it's still considerably better than a lot of stuff I read coming out of the major publishers from well recognized authors. Maybe it'll never win a literary award, but its very entertaining and at the very least well worth the price.

The author created an entertaining story line with relatable characters. With a simple plot line to follow. Really quite enjoyable!

I haven’t had the opportunity to read any of Craig Alanson’s work before, but if this is the quality of his work all the time, I will definitely be getting all of his books.This was a brilliant book, with a lot of action, humour, exceptional character writing, fantastic tech and aliens, outstanding plot twists, and just some of the funniest things I have read in a sci-fi book in a long time.The story follows Joe Bishop, a grunt in the army who is on Earth, in the US during Columbus Day, one of the US holidays, when Earth is attacked by aliens. During the attack, a second alien race arrives, and it appears, chases off the first. The second alien race stay, enlisting humans to help in a galactic war, and suddenly Joe, who did some interesting things during the interrupted invasion, is thrust into the galaxy as a soldier on another planet.The story is told from Joe’s point of view, and really gives us a good understanding of what is happening, how he and his men feel, and the impact of the Ruhar invasion, Kristang relief, and Kristang using humanity.Alanson has written some amazing characters for this book, not just the soldiers, but also the invading alien races.His world building is also incredibly detailed, giving us some interesting and very descriptive planet scapes to investigate.The following section has some spoilers, so if you are not interested, please stop reading – just go and buy the book and read it, it's definitely worth it! – otherwise if you don’t care…SPOILER ALERT…..So this book is split into two parts in a way, the pre ‘Skippy’ section and the post ‘Skippy’ section. This is before Joe meets the AI Skippy and after he meets Skippy, an ancient AI that was evolved (not built) by a race millions of years ago.The story is a brilliant Space Opera, Alien Invasion, Colonisation book prior to Skippy, but after this, it becomes simply sensational. I know that there has been some criticism of the Skippy character, but I found that he brought a level of humour to the story that left me laughing so hard I was crying at points. The interactions between Skippy and Joe, as well as Skippy and other ‘Monkeys’ is just pure genius. Personally, I think that this book was all the better for the addition of Skippy and the AI plot. It added a new twist to the story, something that was somewhat unique, but allowed Alanson to have a lot of fun. It turned a fantastic story into an absolutely brilliant story.END OF SPOILERS!!There is no doubt that this is one of the best Sci-Fi stories of the year, and well worth the read. Having said that, this is one of the few that are actually better as an Audiobook if you have the opportunity (I read it and listened to it as an Audiobook, so I would go for audio if you have the chance). Regardless of format, this should not be missed, and I will be getting Spec Ops in both formats ASAP!!

When writing a review, it's probably important to spell the authors name properly, so that would be Craig Alanson, not Craig Analson. My apologies to the author. As the headline says, "I can't type". And this isn't necessarily a problem as the author can really write. As I get older, it is harder to find books that are not something that has been written before; has too many "oh, that science really hurts it's so bad", or characters that are your typical two dimensional beings created in FlatLand and have never graduated to seeing the 3rd dimension. Mr. Alanson (I spelt it right!) does all of the above incredibly well. The humour and sarcastic "beer can" have persuaded me to read and get on Audible the entire series. Kudos to Craig and R.C. Bray. A dynamic duo if there has ever been one in real life. Read this series. Get Audible. The two are an excellent introduction into audio books if you have never put your feet into the water. Come on in. The water is fine. Having read the book more than once, it ages like a fine wine. I think you will enjoy.

While reading this book it's evident that it's a self published book because it lacks the polishing given by an editor before a book it's published by a publishing house. The story is good and the pacing is enjoyable. The text and dialogues would have been better if an editor had improved them.

I always start a new book, one at the beginning of a series, with an open, but cautious mind. As was the case with this one.I was soon flicking my screen with abandon waiting to see what happened nxt.The storry begins in a similar, and not entirely unpredictable way, alien invasion yada yada. With that in mind, i expected to be dragged through an overly serious, stuffy and derivative story.Wrong. Right ffom the get go, i was treated to very human characters, with real flaws, and emotional response.The story that follows, not only tells us we're not alone, but informs us that, we're the inferior species in a galactic political chess game. No plot spoilers, but this book is at times, funny, clever, and very well imagined. It has the power to flip-flop between heart wrenching and heart warming in the space of a page. And just keeps getting better the further into the book you travel.

O livro coloca a raca humana em uma posição diferenciada. Geralmente a raça humana é bem desenvolvida, com espaço naves, etc. Neste livro ele mostra a raça humana como umas amebas em relação às demais raças extraterrestres.

I'll only comment the first book of the series, but this is valid for the whole series (eight books, some spin offs and at least one more in the oven): It's plainly addictive basic adventures-in-space scifi, full of action, cliffhangers (pretty well resolved ones, by the way) and well-placed flashes of humour.It's true that you should not expect here any hard science facts , but the universe depicted has that coherence of functioning that you don't find so easily. The tapestry of alien races, each one with their own motives and each one with some individual characters is extremely well done. Mr. Alanson has the knack of describing characters that *are interesting*, that is: after some pages you really care for what is going to happen to a lot of them.And the action of the plot is a freight train on the loose. It's true as well that some lines of the plot are repetitive, with the same characters making similar things, but it is son neatly done that you not only don't care, but you do expect it to be resolved thus.I am really expecting book number 9 and I thank Mr. alanson for the very good moments he has given me with all of them.That said, I too think Joe should get laid more.